Welcome 2025

2024 was a year of drastic change for me in my personal life that started in 2023 while lying in a hotel bed in Tokyo. Japan was my bucket list place. That was the whole list. While lying in a bed after a day of walking around finding the cutest little shrines and being enamored with empty side streets, it dawned on me that if I could overcome my fear of flying and tackle my travel anxiety, I could do anything.

When I was 20, in my early college years, I wanted to be a teacher. I was told no by everyone. So, I went through numerous degree changes trying to find the thing that fit. I ultimately ended up with an Interdisciplinary degree in marketing and health care. My favorite classes were marketing and speech pathology. With a degree in hand, I set off to work continuing the same job I had all through college at a funeral home. Eventually I made a switch and ended up at a non-profit. I adored the work I did there but it still wasn’t it. I jumped to marketing and event planning for a local small businesses. Again, loved working with small businesses but it still wasn’t right.

Lying in that hotel bed, I decided right then and there to go onto my local licensing website and start the process of becoming an out of field teacher. That was in November of 2023. In April of 2024, I found an opening at a school my husband had previously worked for and applied. After interviews and finishing up the last of my needed tests, I was hired. I couldn’t believe it. I have a video of me happy dancing when I was given access to my classroom.

During the last half of the year, my food photography pursuits were put on hold while I navigated being a first year teacher. I most definitely do not have that all figured out yet, but this fuels my heart in a way that education does not. Don’t get me wrong, despite the CRAZY first few months of teaching, I adore it with every part of my soul. I just really enjoy creating and photography too much to let it go.

2024 accomplishments

Aside from making a massive career change, I accomplished a few other things in 2024 that I am incredibly proud of.

I started Culinary Blooms to practice my food photography and recipe creation. In doing that, I took on my largest photography project to date. I ended up photographing EVERY SINGLE TEA that The Spice and Tea Trading Post has for their website. That was a huge win for me and challenged me to create consistent lighting over multiple weeks in my home studio. I am no stranger to using artificial light but keeping it the same over time was something new for me.

I also ended up publishing a single copy of Culinary Blooms magazine. It was a short 16 page magazine with recipes, local flavors, and back to school snack tips. I printed about 50 copies and handed them out to the businesses that were featured in it so they could pass them out. This was a huge win for me. I have always wanted to publish a magazine of some sort and to see all my photos printed made my creative heart so happy.

I worked with Amaryllis Salon to do their branding photos and also take photos of all of their for sale products. This new salon is stunning and I was honored to take part in Brandee’s newest journey. I have been photographing her family for years and I loved being a part of this new chapter in her life.

Onto 2025 – Goals + Dreams

My biggest 2025 goal is to book at least one paying client for my photography business. I ultimately want to work with smaller businesses to start but big brands are not out of the question once I have a larger portfolio. Booking one client for a full day of photography is the big goal but even booking a single product or micro business session would be amazing!

With those photo sessions, I am hoping to publish posts about how to actually use branding photos. I have done a few branding sessions with small businesses over the years as trade for portfolio and most of them never actually use the images or they only post the “sneak peeks” from the session and never do anything else with them. Photos are such a powerful tool that can be used in so many ways to elevate websites, marketing, and even day to day social media posts.

I plan on applying for the downtown market near me and I hope that I am able to get into that. I don’t anticipate baked goods being a huge part of my business but I do enjoy baking and would like to dabble in that a little bit this year. People have been telling me for the past 15 years that I should sell my baked goods. Now is as good a time as any to start that I guess. I will be starting with cupcakes, breads, and cookies since that is what I know how to do well. I want to eventually dip my toes into homemade noodles and sourdough breads.

Pop-up photo sessions are something I want to try this year too. I have had a couple of local businesses ask me if I can pop-up at their events to take event photos and themed portraits of their guests. Fingers crossed that my first one will happen in February for a Galantine’s event. I am still working on the details with the business for that. I would also love to pop-up in a local business to do updated head shots for small business owners who need that updated photo but aren’t in the place to do a full branding session yet. I will be talking with a couple of businesses to see if any of them would like to host that pop-up this year.

Finally, my magazine. This is my dream part of this year’s goals + dreams. I would love to publish another issue of Culinary Blooms. It might have to wait until summer when I am not actively teaching. I hope that it can be bigger, with a larger circulation, and maybe a small amount of ad space in it.

My goals for 2025 are huge! They may not seem like much, but juggling teaching (while getting a reading endorsement and doing classes to finalize my teaching certification. Oh, I am also the health champion at my school and do tutoring because I hate myself.) while doing all of these things for Culinary Blooms is a lot on my plate. Unfortunately, if something has to drop it will be this. I value the education I give my littles and my family time too much to let one of those plates break. So, here is to a 2025 filled with dreams and accomplishing goals.